Wendall in the Wild: Giving stranded horseshoe crabs a lift

Tuesday

When Wendall Waters found out a mating pair of horseshoe crabs might be stranded in dry sand on Cape Cod, she decided to give them a Wicked Local lift back to the ocean.

While it isn't completely out of the question that two horseshoe crabs would mate in dry sand, it isn't common. And, I doubt they'd climb over a rock jetty to get there. So, when I found out two crabs were spawning in just such a place when I was on vacation on Cape Cod, I erred on the side of caution and gave them a lift back to the water.

I was actually at my morning "board meeting," sitting in my beach chair watching the waves roll in, when my niece, Michelle, and my sister-in-law, Barb, announced they'd seen two horseshoe crabs buried in sand. It sounded odd, so I had them show me.

Sure enough, there was a mating pair on the dry-sand side of the jetty, and they were pretty well buried. I couldn't imagine them traveling that far along the wall when there was plenty of unobstructed beach nearby where the female could make nests. So, my first thought was that someone took them out of the water and left them stranded. Maybe, maybe not.

Regardless, my gut was telling me they wouldn't make it back to the ocean.

We found a pillow on the beach (another oddity, but fodder for a different column entirely), and my brother Jim helped me lift the horseshoe crabs onto it. When they mate, the smaller male latches onto the female so he can fertilize the eggs as they're deposited, and this little guy was not letting go, so we picked them up together.

To my surprise, the female started to walk off the pillow, dragging the male with her. Then, as I lowered the pillow to the ground, they both toppled off onto their backs. That was fine. They were actually easier to pick up. I put my hands under their "helmets" and swished them upside down in the water to revive them. I turned them over and placed them on the sandy bottom, wishing them a safe journey.

When I was growing up, we were told horseshoe crabs were dangerous. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's virtually no way for a horseshoe crab to hurt you. They have neither teeth nor sharp claws, and they don't use their tails as weapons. Horseshoe crabs use their tails to right themselves if they're flipped over onto their backs.

Horseshoe crabs actually provide many benefits. Their eggs (a female can lay over 80,000 over the course of the spawning season) are a vital food source for shorebirds, many of whom migrate thousands of miles. And, their blue blood is harvested by the bio-medical industry because it contains an agent that can detect bacteria in medicines and medical supplies.

And, let's face it. These things are super cool. They look prehistoric, right? They've been on this planet for over 300 million years, and they haven't changed much.

In Massachusetts, the mating season usually runs May through July, so it's pretty much over. But, next year, go out in June during a full-moon high tide, especially one at night, and you're likely to see them in action.

Wendall Waters is an Ipswich resident and the multi-media journalist for the Tri-Town Transcript and Wicked Local Boxford/Middleton/Topsfield. She and Chris Stevens co-host the Wendall in the Wild Podcast.